Sharif Digital Repository

One of the main causes of low back pain is mechanical loads acting on it. These loads can be measured by in vivo measurement using force and pressure sensors. Although this method leads to accurate results, it is invasive and costly. Currently the only noninvasive way to estimate these loads is to utilize biomechanical models. Using these models requires body posture as an input. Imaging techniques are suitable for determining the posture accurately, but these equipments are expensive and often impractical. So today posture prediction models are used as an alternative cost effective with acceptable accuracy. These mechanisms predict body posture using body mass, height, position and the... 

In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in posturography methods as an objective quantitative tool for assessing balance and indicating patient with high risk of fall. Although many posturographic studies tried to describe balance deficiencies in PD, little success has been achieved in utilizing static posturography as a tool for discriminating faller and non-faller PD patients. Furthermore, Dynamic posturography studies have delivered valuable insight into the potentiality of these methods for assessing balance, but these devices are very high in price and cumbersome to move that can limit the feasibility of their use in the clinical settings. The aims of this study were: 1)... 

In this thesis, 3D pose reconstruction of one or multiple humans in multi-view dynamic scene is considered. Inputs are multi-view frames of multi-view camera systems. Outputs are the 3D reconstructed human poses in 3D space. The pose is the location of 14 human body joints in the 3D space. In this research, it is not allowed to use Kinect sensor data or other Markers or GPS sensors. It is supposed that only multi-view images are used. 3D reconstruction of human body pose can be performed with different assumptions. For example, the scene is indoor only or the camera calibration information is provided at first.Cameras are moving or fixed. In this research, each of this assumption is regarded... 

Manual material handling (MMH) is associated with mechanical back injuries. To manage such injuries, musculoskeletal models are employed to estimate spinal loads during MMH. These models require, as input, 3D-position of the hand-load and body posture whose measurements involve skillful and time-consuming motion analysis investigations.In order to facilitate the procedure of posture measurements and load estimations, three coupled artificial-neural-networks (ANNs) were developed. To predict whole body posture, ANN1 was trained based on our novel measurements on 15 individuals. Each individual performed several static-tasks by holding 0, 5, and 10 kg weight at 9 different anterior-left... 

Manual material handling (MMH) activities are identified as risk factors for occupational low back pain (LBP). Task-related variables including load and posture characteristics are required as input into these models and tools for estimation of trunk external moment. Biomechanical modeling studies that aim to mathematically estimate low back loads currently need an inevitable parallel time-consuming in vivo study in an equipped laboratory to measure trunk posture under physical activities. Inertial sensors as a portable, accurate, almost inexpensive, and small device could be very helpful in order to capture the kinematic data of movement in human activities. My master thesis aims to... 

Low Back Pain is one of the most problems in health domain which has a high treatment costs, also has high recurrence rates. Postural stability has been introduced as a health characteristic for musculoskeletal systems. Body stability is maintained with sensory feedback data such as Eyes, Vestibular and proprioception data which are sent to brain. Prior investigations have shown that proprioception data have many disorders in lumbar area of Low Back Pain patient and this data are not sent to brain encounters so many problems for muscle activation and stability of body. Researches have been indicated that Low Back Pain patients rely on Ankle proprioception more than healthy people and less... 

The role of the lumbar muscles in maintaining posture and balancing externally applied loads has been studied for many years.preliminary studies used electromyograpy (EMG) to establish a relationship between trunk posture and muscle ativity.so developing a better undrestanding of the functional role of those muscles. Determination of lumbar muscle forces, will have an important role in reducing low back pain I future.For this reason,reaserchers have done many studies for understanding the resistence and function on the musulosketal system bye using of various protocls and have utilized of various biomechanical models for determining the effects of applied externally loads on lumbar... 

Shoulder is one of the most important joints of the body with high degrees of freedom. Synergic analysis of the shoulder muscles shows the joint condition due to applied force or torque. The results of the linear COP parameters and nonlinear analysis indicate the characteristics of subjects postural stability. The flexi-bar is a rehabilitation tool which stimulates the muscles. In this study, the effect of bar on the body has been examined. The modeling is carried out in two horizontal and vertical condition of bar in sixteen separate positions in the upper right side quadrant of the model. Muscle activation and joint stiffness, force and torque were obtained. COP data in AP and ML were... 

Today, obesity, as a major global health challenge, affects more than 30 percent of the world's population. To investigate the effect of obesity on spinal function, a common method is motion analysis (kinematic method). This method is based on the claim that the abnormal mechanical function of the spine is directly related to its abnormal motions.The aim of this study is to measure and compare the range of motions (RoMs) of different segments of the spine in all anatomical plates between obese and normal individuals, as well as to calculate and compare some motion rhythms between the lumbar spine and the pelvis in these two groups. Comparing the posture of the spine between obese and normal... 

Parkinson's disease is a progressive neurodegenerative disease in which balance disorders are a common symptom. Clinical and non-clinical methods have been developed to evaluate the quality of maintaining balance. Clinical methods include questionnaires and tests that are scored by the therapist and therefore depend on the examiner's skill. On the other hand, there are biomechanical methods that do not depend on the therapist's skill. Posturography -based methods are among the biomechanical tests used today to assess balance. In these methods, some indicators are extracted from the patient's foot center of pressure that can measure the quality of balance. These studies usually examine the... 

Background: Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients seriously suffer from instability and impaired postural control. Rehabilitation exercises help them to recover their ability through long-term practical sessions. For designing optimal tasks in each session, and in agreement with each patient’s state, it is essential to employ computational models and approaches.Objective: The goal of this study is to develop a computational postural control model of Parkinson’s disease in order to provide new understanding of the postural control in PD, and to gain insight on the effect of balance trainings on PD (the learning dynamics), from the view of this model.Methods: In the first phase of this study, the... 

The current study introduces algorithms for inertial motion capture which use data from 9-DOF inertial-magnetic sensor modules to estimate the position and attitude of body links. First, an algorithm is proposed which is capable of IMU calibration without the use of external equipment with less than 0.5% error. Next, extended and unscented Kalman filter-based (EKF and UKF) inertial motion capturing algorithms are introduced that utilize biomechanical constraints in addition to kinematics. In addition to real-time sensor calibration, the algorithms are capable of real-time link geometry estimation, which allows for the imposition of biomechanical constraints without a priori knowledge... 

Objective: To assess adequacy of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Lifting Equation (NLE) in controlling lumbar spine loads below their recommended action limits during load-handling activities in the stoop and squat using a detailed musculoskeletal model,that is, the AnyBody Modeling System.Background: The NIOSH committee employed simplistic biomechanical models for the calculation of the spine compressive loads with no estimates of the shear loads. In addition, NLE does not include the posture of the knee during manual material handling. It is therefore unknown whether the NLE would adequately control lumbar compression and shear loads below their... 

Using learning from demonstration approaches is one of the ways to teach a robot how to perform different skills. In classic methods of learning from demonstration, the subject should wear some sensors and devices which is and expensive way. But, with the progresses that have been made in the context of computer vision, it is possible now to achieve to the same results with less cost. Learning from observation is the approach that would be used in this project to do that. By using this method, when robot watches a video, it tries to understand the behavior of the subject and behave in the same way.The purpose of the project is that the robot learns some social (interactive) skills through... 

Biomechanical models require body posture to evaluate the risk of musculoskeletal injuries during daily/occupational activities like manual material handling (MMH). The procedure to measure body posture via motion-analysis techniques is complex, time-consuming, and limited to equipped laboratories. This study aims to develop an easy-to-use yet accurate model that predict human whole-body static posture (3D body coordinates and anatomical joint angles) during different MMH activities. Twenty healthy male right-handed individuals with body mass index between 18 and 26 performed 204 symmetric and asymmetric MMH activities. Each person reached (i.e., without any load in hands) the destinations... 

Body posture is an essential input of musculoskeletal models that evaluate spinal loads in occupational activities. Posture is either measured in vivo via video-camera motion capture systems or predicted via artificial neural networks (ANNs) [1]. As video-camera measurements are impractical for use in real workstations, we have recently developed an ANN that predicts full-body posture during one- and two-handed static load-handling activities. This ANN, trained based on the posture data of 20 subjects each performing 204 static load-handling activities, uses 3D coordinates of the hand-load, body weight, and body height of the worker to predict 3D coordinates of 41 full-body skin markers. The... 

Iranian women spend a lot of times in the kitchen area in order to have good effects on the family. Unfortunately, we see many of them are suffering from body injuries and particularly musculoskeletal disorders in their middle ages. Many factors cause such problems among which awkward postures are mentioned and with identifying these postures, corrective solutions could be proposed.In this study, firstly, relationship of body injuries with working in the kitchen area is considered, awkward postures are identified and expedient actions are suggested. The aim of this study is chosen designing a suitable task chair for kitchen among the proposed solutions. Then, chair specifications are...